This was the third Jazz in the Park Festival to take place in Cluj and this year the city also holds the honour of being the European Youth Capital. Zoe performed on the main park stage to a big audience: "when the concert started, besides the listeners already gathered in front of the stage, huge masses of people occupied the park's alley, including behind the stage area so that I couldn't see the actual limits of the audience," said Alis Vasile, British Council Arts Project Manager in Romania,"I feared a mutiny at the end of the performance, when the crowd was asking for more!"

The Zoe Rahman Trio comprises British Jazz Awards winner Alec Dankworth on bass and the versatile Cheryl Alleyne on drums. Zoe herself has been described as "a formidable jazz pianist in post-Herbie Hancock territory" (John Fordham for The Guardian) and her fifth album Kindred Spirits has also received critical acclaim. She won Best Jazz Act at the 2012 MOBO awards, was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize in 2006 for Melting Pot and has previously worked with George Mraz, Jerry Dammers’ Spatial AKA Orchestra, James Carter, Bob Moses, Danny Thompson, Courtney Pine and her brother, saxophonist Idris Rahman.